Trapped
by ShadowSpires
Summary: The com in his ear echoed with horrendous screams, shrill, desperate, *familiar* animal cries shredding anything even resembling calm and composure. Tears blurred his view of traffic momentarily before he blinked them away, ruthlessly suppressing them. Jay/Dick.


Dick's bike roared beneath him as he pushed it to it's limits, weaving between traffic, and taking turns with a reckless disregard for his own safety that would earn him a blistering lecture under any other circumstances.

The com in his ear echoed with horrendous screams, shrill, desperate, *familiar* animal cries shredding anything even resembling calm and composure. Tears blurred his view of traffic momentarily before he blinked them away, ruthlessly suppressing them.

"I'm coming, I'm coming, hold on for me, it's alright, I'm coming, I promise!" The chant was almost mindless, coming out broken and desperate as his bike roared in counterpoint, fierce and determined.

Tim's near-frantic confusion and Bruce's low growl demanding answers tried to impinge on his attention, but he blocked them out. The last thing he'd actually processed from Tim was his confused "Who- _Red Hood?!_"

After that, Dick's body had gone into auto-pilot, abandoning the punk he'd been pumping for information, demanding Tim's coordinates, and throwing himself through the city towards him, and the source of those terrified cries.

Dirt flew and the bike skidded across the abandoned construction site as Dick threw himself off it without even bothering to come to a stop, flying into a roll, and coming up running towards the cries now echoing both in his com and in the air around him.

In the faint green glow of the security lighting, Tim was fighting off the flailing attack of a filthy, desperate figure, striking at the young hero with a piece of scrap metal. Dick threw himself into the fray, heedless of the dangers. He wrapped himself around the figure, pinning flailing arms to heaving sides, not even noticing when the metal scored on skin and drew blood, and using his powerful legs to pin kicking limbs to the ground.

"Quick, Tim!" He shouted, to be heard over the enraged, terrified screams of the man in his arms, and Tim's confused protests. "The lights."

Tim looked blank, blood dripping into his eyes where he had received a score across his forehead.

"What about the lights?!" Tim shouted back, completely at a loss as to what was going on here. He'd scared a lead out of a low-level gang banger who he had busted mugging a woman. When busted by the Bats for even relatively minor crimes, the low-level thugs of Gotham had a tendency to confess all their sins if you glared and looked knowing, which Tim had down to an art form. When his mark had blurted desperately that they hadn't been planning on killing 'him,' just leaving him there to teach him a lesson, really, _they were going to let him out_, Tim hadn't known what to expect.

When he had reached the location he had been given, and heard that awful screaming, the desperate pounding and scrabbling, he had wrenched the door to the tiny dirt-floored shed open, and promptly been attacked by a dirt and blood streaked figure, wearing a familiar costume. He had held the other off, equally confused by Jason's behavior as he was by the sudden desperate reassurances coming across the com from Nightwing. When Dick had come roaring into the site the situation only got more confusing.

"They're *green*, Tim. Pit green! Kill them!" Dick hoped that was enough to get his message across, because he had no more attention to spare.

"Easy, easy, Jay, I'm here. I'm here, and you're here with me, not in that place, not in either of those awful places anymore." He continued to talk, reassuring Jason, thrashing in his arms, that he was safe, not buried, not choking back to life in that horrid Pit.

God, locked in a small room, assaulted with the smell of dirt and damp, trapped, unable to get out, and then released into an area bathed in light nearly identical to the Lazarus Pit's evil glow? No wonder Jason was in such a state. He was totally immersed in the nightmarish memories that haunted him night and day.

Dick held on to Jason with the determination of familiarity and love. It had never been this bad before, but Dick had become somewhat used to easing Jason out of nightmares. Luckily, Jason seemed to forget all of his most lethal training when he was like this, or Dick might not have survived the learning process.

He blew across Jason's face, letting him feel the air, know he wasn't buried alive, clawing his way out of a coffin. He almost sobbed with relief when a couple well placed batarangs took out the sickly green lighting, and Tim pulled both his own and Dick's bikes around so their bright white headlights shone on the two still-struggling figures on the ground.

As Jason's wild struggling and terrified screaming slowly faded to tremors and desperate whimpers, Dick carefully shifted to tuck the larger man fully against him, face tucked into his neck where he could feel the pulse of Dick's heart and hear the rasp of his breath.

He kept up the soothing whispers, hands tentatively stroking down his back, and not even attempting to take away the makeshift knife that Jason clutched against him like his kris - like a security blanket - despite the way his tight grip was digging the sharp edges into Jason's fingers and palm, and prickled against Dick's chest.

He ignored Tim, ignored the roar of the Batmobile approaching. He was going to have to explain eventually. The others didn't know he and Jason were together, didn't know they'd been working together, sleeping together. Didn't know about the other's halting crawl back towards sanity. Didn't know about the desperate search Dick had been on for his missing lover for the last day, after Jason had dropped abruptly out of contact. He was going to have to explain, but not just now.

Now, he would focus entirely on coaxing his lover back into the present from the horrible grips of his past. Jason belonged to *him* now, and Dick would not allow his past to reclaim him.


End file.
